Auditors have found Forestry Tasmania (FT) has failed on 10 key criteria in its attempt to gain crucial Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. Source: ABC News
FSC auditors visited Tasmania in December 2014 to assess the state owned company, and handed down their draft report in April last year.
The final report found FT complied with 193 indicators, but needed further action on 10 more before its products could be marketed overseas as coming from responsibly managed forests.
The criteria FT has failed to meet largely centred on swift parrot protection, identifying high conservation values and clear felling of old growth forests.
Since the report was finalised, FT had met one outstanding criterion.
The report said FT needed to reduce the rate and extent to which it was harvesting old growth and mature forest structural components, and find alternatives to clear felling.
Auditors also wanted FT to modify its procedures to appropriately protect rare, threatened and endangered species and other “high conservation values”.
The other criteria FT needed to address included identifying nesting habitat of swift parrot and masked owls and more effectively considering the effects of coupe-level forest operations.
The state-owned company’s Steve Whiteley could not say when certification was likely to be achieved. But he said FT had already met one of the 10 key criteria.
While many criteria still had not been met, progress had been made on protecting old-growth forests.
Mr Whiteley said the company would need to work with the State Government on threatened species management.
“Some of the things that are outside of our control, we obviously need to wait for state processes, so we can’t dictate the timetable on those,” he said.
“But we would hope to have made significant progress by end of this year…it depends somewhat on some other work that’s being done by the State Government and the Commonwealth as well.”
Premier Will Hodgman said it was always expected that it would take some time for FT to meet certification requirements but the Government would continue to pursue it.
Opposition Leader Bryan Green is blaming the demise of the forestry peace deal. He believes the actions of former resources minister Paul Harriss undermined FT’s attempt to gain FSC certification.
“The Tasmanian forest agreement actually ensured that there was community support to move towards that,” he said. “They tore that up and it seems to me that Paul Harriss wanted to tear up any opportunity for FSC certification in Tasmania, which meant that effectively he had to go.”
Vica Bayley from the Wilderness Society called on both FT and the Government to show leadership in reforming the state’s forestry industry.
“How Forestry Tasmania responds to that, and particularly how Minister Gutwein responds to that is going to be the test,” he said. “But clearly this is going to be an opportunity for them to turn over a new leaf, to rethink their forestry policy and reset the parameters of how forestry happens in Tasmania.”
FT will phase out clear felling of old growth forest by the middle of the year.
The Forest Industries Association said FT needed to ensure whatever practice replaced clear-felling was equally safe for workers.
